Undeniably compelling but in need of balance

Australian metalcore band The Amity Affliction recently released their eighth studio album, Not Without My Ghosts and it is without a doubt their heaviest release to date. Since 2008, when they released their debut album Severed Ties, The Amity Affliction have played an emotional, introspective style of metalcore which focuses on relatable subjects of insecurity and grief, coming mainly from the experiences of lead extreme vocalist Joel Birch. While they have shown that they have the chops to hang with the genre’s most brutal heavyweights, The Amity Affliction have always tamed their edge with an equal share of soft, melodic sensibility, especially in the performances of their clean vocalist and bassist Ahren Stringer. Recently, on albums like 2018’s Misery, the band even delved into pop-rock elements, which has turned off some fans of their original sound.

On Not Without My Ghosts, The Amity Affliction reject their pop-rock experimentation and instead dive into the most brutal aspects of modern mainstream metal. The band has always tried to make a powerful and cathartic experience out of Birch’s personal lyrics, but the urgency and ferocity with which this album states his pain is, at many points, on another level. The band owes a large part of this gripping power to their drummer Joe Longobardi, who rips through double kicks and blast beats like nobody’s business. The lyrics are more extreme than ever as well, with Birch focusing more directly and consistently than ever on themes of suicide, depression and grief. At the same time, The Amity Affliction still make prominent use of Stringer’s trademark clean vocals and of more spacious instrumentals to accompany them, leading to an ambitious mix of moods in almost every song.

The album kicks off with “Show Me Your God,” a song about the connection between gun availability and suicide rates in America. Right off the bat, The Amity Affliction show that they are not messing around with a wall of blast beats, thick rhythm guitar and vicious screaming. Between that deathcore-ish onslaught of a first verse and the choir pads that follow, the band show off a subtle but significant (and exciting) influence from Lorna Shore of all bands, though the chorus makes it clear that they are sticking to their clean-vocal guns as they always have. 

After the first track, Not Without My Ghosts presents much of the same good-cop/bad-cop style of metalcore that the album started with. “It’s Hell Down Here,” the second track, contains some seriously savage drum work from Longobardi, as well as deeply personal lyrics about grieving over a friend who died by suicide. Like much of the album’s tracks, the heaviest sections of “It’s Hell Down Here” feature high synths above the downtuned riffing and vigorous drum smacking, and this combination lends an interesting emotional color to the song (as well as every other song that uses it).

The fourth track, “Death and the Setting Sun,” presents the most successful blend of heavy verses and pre choruses with clean choruses on the album, as the chorus supplies a haunting atmosphere and catchiness which supports the rest of the song. The feature of Comeback Kid vocalist Andrew Neufeld on the song’s pre choruses and the breakdown lead to some of the most electrifying highlights of the album.

The band follows up with “I See Dead People,” their heaviest track ever, more deathcore than metalcore (no clean singing at all to contain the heaviness). The song features a posthumous feature from the late New Zealand rapper Louie Knuxx which does add a needed alternative-sounding interlude to the song, but unfortunately the repetition and content of the lyrics don’t quite enhance it. “Close To Me” has some of the tightest performances and creative songwriting on the album, but unfortunately suffers from its most cliche lyrics (we hear “I am so lost and lonely” twice in every chorus). Other notable moments include the catchy and simple chorus to “The Big Sleep” and the sick breakdown on “God Voice,” which provides one last bang before the closer.

The closer of the album, “Not Without My Ghosts,” is a simple ballad meant to cleanse the listener’s palate of all the heaviness the album has served prior, as Stringer stated in an interview with Apple Music. The album up until this point has given many references to “ghosts” from the past, some more literal than others, and here the band offers the possibility of moving forward, despite those ghosts. While it does achieve those goals, it unfortunately doesn’t offer much musically in the process, consisting mainly of repetitive vocal lines which build up but don’t climax (a description that applies to the vocals from Birch, Stringer and the featured artist Phem), and which can even get tiring as they repeat.

One overarching issue with this record is the clash between the deadly serious lyrical content and the delivery of the clean choruses. With exceptions in “Death And The Setting Sun” and “I See Dead People” (which has no singing), every chorus on this LP shaves off some of the integrity of the song with a simple, innocent-sounding chorus that seems to downplay the pain of the lyrics. Although many listeners won’t complain about the choruses in songs like “It’s Hell Down Here,” most will surely agree that when Stringer sings “Sick of living in this misery / Don’t want to be alive / I want eternal sleep” in “Fade Away,” the sweet delivery and melody don’t do the lyrics about suicidal ideation justice. In the same interview with Apple Music, Stringer mentions that he sees no problem with making happy-sounding songs about sad topics (it’s worked for Amity in the past after all), but the increased seriousness of this album and the unhinged anguish with which Birch delivers his share of the lyrics does not leave the same room for happy songwriting.

Not Without My Ghosts is a successful effort by The Amity Affliction to intensify their sound with heavier elements and to delve into more serious themes of grief and sorrow, and it stands out as one of the band’s most effective albums. The new viciousness and great songwriting here result in some truly compelling and enjoyable pieces. Many fans of metalcore, whether or not they’ve enjoyed Amity in the past or not, will love this album, and even extreme metal purists will enjoy its heavier sections, though the clean choruses may turn them off.